The highest ratio of foreigners in the South is 2.2 percent and the lowest is onehalf of 1 percent. the latter being about the ratio of the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. What foreign element we have in Virginia is largely to be found in our big cities. Fortunately for us. the South offered few attractions to the peasant immigrant. as we had few large industries. no free land. few large cities. relatively low wages. and cheap labor competition in the form of the Negro. The racial problem of our Nation of the most serious consequences is in those sections in which the hordes from southern Europe settledmen who were illiterate. with no previous training in free citizenship. and quick to resort to violence and disorders. From their ranks were recruited socialists and anarchists. including one who assassinated President McKinley. and then there have been deliberate importations of foreign agitators. who have continued here their struggle against organized society that they had been carrying on at home.
Identified stereotypes
The speaker generalizes about immigrants from southern Europe being illiterate, prone to violence, and associated with socialism and anarchism.